


The Gift That Keeps (On Giving)

by zempasuchil



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-10
Updated: 2009-09-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 20:04:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zempasuchil/pseuds/zempasuchil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>England in Narnia, or, By the time Christmas comes again Lucy knows exactly what to give.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Gift That Keeps (On Giving)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [katakokk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katakokk/gifts).



> for katakokk in the 2009 Narnia Exchange :) her prompt was "Golden Age fic set towards the last 5 years of their reign. Pools, presents, needles, tea." thanks go to be_themoon for betaing! :)

THE FIRST YEAR

 _The first time Lucy has chocolate in a very long time, it is wrapped in fine paper in a cotton-lined box. “Do you know,” she says, “this is the first time I’ve had it since I can remember. I know I’ve had it before, I couldn’t forget that taste. But I simply can’t recall when or where.”_

 _“This is from our furthest isle,” the ambassador says. “There, they make a bitter drink of the powder. We find it too strong for our tastes, so we add sugar. The King prefers it powdered in cow’s milk with sugar, or a solid piece eaten slowly with a goblet of wine.”_

 _The heady taste of the chocolate, darker and stronger than she thought she could stand, is nearly intoxicating. She only takes one bite before she puts it away, for another occasion._

=  


  
THE SECOND YEAR

 _The next gift she receives is several hanks of silk embroidery thread that she knows she’ll never use; she’s too used to the precision and fluidity of the paintbrush to settle for painstaking needlework. But when Christmas comes she knows exactly what to do._  


_  


  


Susan thinks it would be good to pick up sewing. Practical. She doesn’t like burdening the seamstress with everyday rips and tears. Everyone she asks to teach her tells her it’s not queenly, doesn’t she have more important things to do like listen to minstrels and dance with the visitors from Galma? Finally, she gets Mrs Beaver to teach her after much cajoling, because Mrs Beaver just can’t say no to her – she is Susan Pevensie whom she has known from Susan’s youth, for one, and for another she is her Queen. When Lucy gives her the thread Mrs Beaver rejoices, for she will teach Susan embroidery, a beautiful and dignified diversion for a Queen. Susan sighs inwardly and picks up her needle with sore fingers.

But all this frivolous embroidery ends when war threatens and breaks loose. She is occupied instead with maps and counts, strategy and calling on alliances. Not weeks later she is crawling through the brush of the wild Western Woods, waiting for Edmund to bring reinforcements. Lucy is already out among the wounded with her cordial but they need more healers, more surgeons, and Peter has just crawled over to Susan, a long straight slash in his thigh.

“Lucy’s gone,” she says, paling at the sight and at his pale face. “I’ll call her.”

“No, no, no,” Peter urges, taking the hand that reaches for her horn. “They’ll hear us and our location will be given away.”

“But Peter, you need help, you’re bleeding,”

“You can sew me up. Look, it’s not that deep,” but it’s far deeper than she’d ever like to see on him.

“I can’t, I’ve never –“

Firmly holding her shoulder and cupping her cheek, his eyes hold his faith in her, and, stomach in knots, she knows what she must do. She crawls over and picks up her satchel. The needle and thread are in the front pocket.

She can tell he’s trying his hardest for her sake not to shout when she pierces his skin. Susan is trying too, trying to remember Mrs Beaver’s patient paws, and after two breaths she watches her tired hands moving nimbly and capably.  


_  


  


 _It is like the hands of god held hers, she remembers, and she hardly thinks of pain every subsequent time her needle pierces flesh. She gives them life, at whatever cost._

=  


  
THE THIRD YEAR

 _The next, a cold mountain night’s cup of tea that she holds with both hands till they are warm, and savors till only the dregs remain._  


_  


  


Finally, the tariffs have been drastically lowered in an agreement between Narnia and Terebinthia: enough to have black tea leaves imported, and so they celebrate by throwing a High Tea. It strikes Edmund as a little frivolous, the whole teatime tradition; even in war there was a regular tea with a spread of food. But none of them would think of actually objecting. Peter enjoys the ceremony, Susan the regularity, Lucy the sweetness, and Edmund just enjoys the tea.

For a while, there was a full embargo; they had to resort to equally expensive chai from Calormene, which was delicious but too spicy and soporific, more orange than brown in flavor. It sent them right to sleep. The Calormenes drink coffee to wake up, also strong and rich, but too sourly bitter for Edmund. For both coffee and chai, they add a lot of cream and sugar, and so it’s too rich to drink more than a little at a time, like chocolate (another import they only rarely could find).

No, chai has not gained hold in Narnia, but sugar certainly has, and the first step Edmund takes in trade negotiations is to ascertain a supply of the cane sugar grown on far Calormene islands. Trade is trade, and Narnia cannot afford an embargo just because of the barbarous institution of slavery practiced in Calormene and its island colonies.

There’s something about tea that reminds Edmund of – what? Childhood? He doesn’t remember much of that. Anyway, he can’t have actually had black tea then; Narnia has only drunk herbal teas as long as he’s known. It has only now became affordable to have more than a pound of tea leaves per year between the four of them – they’re royals and they live in luxury, but they’re not going to strain their budget for tea no matter how much Lucy loves it with cream and sugar, or how good it is with Peter’s favorite biscuits, or how much Susan loves its smell, or much it reminds Edmund of something he can’t put his finger on.  


_  


  


 _That winter, he brings a cup of tea to the window and inhales deeply as he watches the snow fall. Peter drapes a blanket around his shoulders, and he’s never felt warmer._

=  


  
THE FOURTH YEAR

 _The next gift is a set of face paints from Lune. Both she and Susan receive them, but after putting them on Lucy shows the dryads who wait on her and they laughed to see her face so highly colored. “You already have pink roses in your cheeks,” a young crabapple said to her. “Why paint them on, so unnatural-looking?”_

 _So while Susan painted her lips and lined her eyelids with charcoal, Lucy found that she could imitate these faces rather than cake more color onto them, drawing with eye-pencil on spare scraps of paper, smudging rouge for color, mixing powders with water to make even more colors._

 _When Lune returned their visit and came to Cair Paravel, he came with a set of oil paints and yards of canvas. Lucy gasps to see them. “But how did you -“ she begins, but he winks and tilts his head toward Susan, who giggles at Lucy’s side. “I sent him one of your drawings to show him how much you were enjoying his gift to us.”_  


_  


  


She’d never thought herself much an artist, but looking at all the colors of the oil paints, she began to turn the idea over in her head, started looking at the way the light fell in the woods, keeping her eye on a scene to contemplate the color and shadow, noticing the visual impressions of distance, warmth, depth.

In the wood there’s a pool the naiads love to visit, where the cold water swirls around and the bottom is sandy and the weed clings to the banks, waving like red thick hair. One day instead of going swimming she says to her handmaidens (all dryads and naiads), “Please, go ahead and swim without me. I’d like to try something.” They giggle and cajole Lucy to come bathe with them, let them braid her hair, but she says, “No thank you, I want to paint you all while you play. I want to paint this little glade.”

She sits there by the edge with her oils and a piece of stretched canvas, and paints. It starts out badly but she works little by little and slowly gets used to the wetness of oils, how they blend and don’t blend, how she they’re not like watercolors since she can put more on top if she wants to fix something. It’s a struggle but in the end she thinks, in this corner of the painting she got the cast of light just right. And this naiad’s back looks like she is stretching, which she was. It’s perfect. She’ll go back tomorrow.

Lucy goes there again the next day, and the next, with and without the dryads and naiads, and sits in different places, trying different angles, moving forward to look into the pool, moving back to peer through the trees at the brightly lit glade.

She can’t make it every day; after all, she is Queen and has duties, but she tries to go somewhere to paint as often as she can. Somehow the oils don’t ever run out. Sure, she uses as little paint as possible, but it almost seems magical. She would not be surprised.

One day when she is sitting behind the trees looking at the way the light and shadows play on the water and flash through the brush, she hears a little splash, and sees something move in the water. She can’t tell what or who it is, her view is blocked by the undergrowth, but she hears a soft voice humming, sees flashes of curly dark hair. Yes, a curly head dappled in sun and shade. Moving in shadows quickly, behind that branch, a low laugh, alone, but who? but not alone – oh!  
What kind of beast?

\- a flash of pale skin –

Bacchus? A faun? She sees no horns but perhaps (she shifts to see better) perhaps it is one –  
\- and another voice joins, too soft to hear but lower, and she sees a golden head turned bobbing upon the water – two fauns? They are too gentle with each other for Bacchus to be near.

Suddenly (the dark head turns and pauses in a little window of view) she recognizes them (his voice a little louder, his strong jaw and shoulders, his freckled back) and her brush pauses in mid-stroke.

And she resumes, and she paints the bathers there.  


_  


  


 _Peter unwraps it from its colorful paper and Lucy is proud, and nervous. He looks and looks, looking more than smiling, and before he can turn his surprised gaze on her she hugs him, burying her face in his chest._

 _“It’s beautiful, Lu,” he say, quiet. “But isn’t it a little... it’s not like that. It’s not what it looks like.”_

 _“I know,” Lucy says, giving and forgiving. “I saw.”_

=  


  
THE FIFTH YEAR

In the back of her wardrobe she finds the box of chocolate, years old now, and finds to her delight that, far from spoiling, it tastes even richer and more savory than she remembered.

That night she brings it to her siblings, and they sit together by the fire, shaving off slivers of the lump to lay on their tongues and let melt away. Peter and Susan have wine, Edmund and Lucy milk.

“I decided I didn’t need an occasion after all,” she says, and Susan smiles.

“I think it rather makes the occasion.”

Peter winks and raises his wine glass to Susan as Lucy leans back against her brother’s legs.

They stay up late into the night. Peter doesn’t remember what they talked about, only the cast of the firelight on Edmund’s flushed face, Susan’s bright eyes, Lucy’s head on his lap. Thinking there could be no one else, no one else he could hold like this.

Too much wine, really.

Waking late, he rushes to the stables in half-buckled boots with cuffs unlaced. The rest of the hunting party is already waiting for him, eagerness fed by rumors of the White Stag; he can hear their voices outside the stables. He calls for his mount, who is already saddled thanks to the attentive stable boy.

It didn’t used to be like this, he thinks suddenly as he shifts in the saddle, smelling the leather and oil. He doesn’t remember riding into battle with the White Witch on a saddled horse. And he doesn’t remember the last time he rode a unicorn, though he is High King. When they came to Narnia, did they carry saddles with them from the other country? _Not_ , he considers, _exactly._

He thinks of Susan’s needle and thread serving her better as a surgeon than as a seamstress, of Lucy painting both impressionism and portraiture for all of Cair Paravel, of Edmund the tea connoisseur, and thinks, when did our kingdom of Narnia change? It was different, before we came. The fauns’ wild dances are developing steps now. Maybe it was a natural consequence, after a hundred years of being driven underground, that some of the structure and richness of culture would be repressed and lost. When Aslan banished winter, _when he brought us to banish winter_ , it was only bound to develop complexity and formalization with greater freedom and more practice. But he misses the wildness. He has made order and wellbeing his rule, but some days he wishes Narnia would have remained a wilderness at the barest edge of civilization. He wonders what freedom is.

We’ve changed it, and no one asks if it’s for the better, do they?

Peter does not recognize these doubts until too late, and they have already stumbled out of their world – their world, no longer their world, it would seem. The guilt haunts him, and he never tells, certain that this thought was what sent them back, what deemed them unworthy of every gift Aslan and Narnia had given them.  


_  


  


 _He remembers this: the glow that night. It wasn’t from the darkest chocolate nor the reddest wine nor the fire. It is something that stays with him, in Edmund’s pale skin, Susan’s bright eyes, Lucy’s warm hand, and no world or god can take that from him._


End file.
